Macbook Battery Life

[Kuldar_Joel]

I've got the 2021 M1 Pro Macbook Pro, I've had it for about 2 months.

I feel like it's battery might need replacing.

I did a quick test, I basically only watched yt videos and some streams on twitch and the battery went from 100% to 10% in 4h 30min, is that normal or should it be longer?

 

Thanks In Advance!

[Brian McKee]

Isn't there a way to see the battery wear on macs? Depends on if that's enough for your usecase if you need a battery replacement, certainly sounds a bit low to me though.

[Donut417]

16 minutes ago, Kuldar_Joel said:

I've got the 2021 M1 Pro Macbook Pro, I've had it for about 2 months.

I feel like it's battery might need replacing.

I did a quick test, I basically only watched yt videos and some streams on twitch and the battery went from 100% to 10% in 4h 30min, is that normal or should it be longer?

 

Thanks In Advance!

If you go to your settings then to battery it should show the battery health. Further more you could also go to General, About, and all the way to the bottom for System Report. That will show how many charge cycles as well as capacity. Im not an expert in reading this info, but it should give you some direction I would assume. 

[Kuldar_Joel]

The cycle count is 51 and health is 97%

[BondiBlue]

How bright was the display? The Mini LED displays used in those MacBooks can pull a decent amount of power, and having the brightness setting turned up can impact battery life a lot. Also, do you have the 14" model or the 16" model? I own a 16" (M1 Max), and with general usage (including a mix of web browsing, MS Office tasks, YouTube playback, etc.) it lasts quite a bit longer than 4.5 hours. But, if you have the 14" you'll have a much smaller battery than me. 

 

13 minutes ago, Kuldar_Joel said:

The cycle count is 51 and health is 97%

This is perfectly fine. If this is accurate I don't think your battery is the issue. 

[saintlouisbagels]

Are you running it at high brightness and not Low Power mode? 100% to 10% sounds pretty normal to me under those two conditions.

 

- 2021 16" M1 Pro owner here

[seanondemand]

You running these streams in Safari or some other browser?

[Darkseth]

M1 macbook pro 13,3" (late 2020, there is no 2021 version) owner here.

 

4 1/2 hours from 100% to 10% from just streaming? That is very very far from normal. You should at LEAST get 15+ hours if you use like 50% brightness.
100% Brightness might bring that down, but 8-10 hours should still be easily possible. 

Chrome instead of Safari is also just a minimal difference, Chrome runs on ARM and pretty well. I never noticed a noticeable difference in Energy consumption.

 

Maybe check if there's any process running in the background, sometimes there are some indexing stuff going on.

<5 hours on M1 sounds like something is really draining on those CPU Cores.

 

You can use Terminal --> "sudo powermetrics", the M1 Chip should rarely hit 1 Watt power consumption from streaming. 100mw to 300 mw maybe is realistic.

Or you use asitop, which has a nice Interface with an average power consumption: https://github.com/tlkh/asitop

 

Or Activity Monitor, check for CPU usage. There must be a Process draining alot.

 

 

I played around with a react native setup today. Backend on a Docker Container running in the background and starting the App on an android Emulator and xcode iOS emulator, while beeing in a google meet Call, and connected to a WQHD Monitor, many Tabs and stuff open.
At like almost 54% Battery it showed me 3 hours remaining. So with 100% and that Workload (which is far higher than simple streaming), i would've managed at least 6 hours~.

 

 

In my personal Experience, Low Power mode mostly doesn't do anytyhing for battery. This Mode caps the Power consumption at 4 Watt, but on any normal everyday situation it will almost never reach 4w or more, so it stays below that anyway. Just doing basic stuff it's usually <1w on average.

Low Power Mode helps alot when you do high Load like Rendering. When it will render slower, but consume MUCH less power.

[BondiBlue]

2 hours ago, Darkseth said:

M1 macbook pro 13,3" (late 2020, there is no 2021 version) owner here.

 

4 1/2 hours from 100% to 10% from just streaming? That is very very far from normal. You should at LEAST get 15+ hours if you use like 50% brightness.
100% Brightness might bring that down, but 8-10 hours should still be easily possible. 

Keep in mind that you have a 13" M1 MacBook Pro while OP has the 2021 14" M1 Pro MacBook Pro. Your MacBook Pro has a display that is not as bright at the 14", and it uses a lot less power. The 14" MBP also has fewer efficiency CPU cores (2 vs. 4 in your MacBook). 

[Darkseth]

2 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

Keep in mind that you have a 13" M1 MacBook Pro while OP has the 2021 14" M1 Pro MacBook Pro. Your MacBook Pro has a display that is not as bright at the 14", and it uses a lot less power. The 14" MBP also has fewer efficiency CPU cores (2 vs. 4 in your MacBook). 

you're right, totally my bad. Idk why i read that so wrong lol. Could've sworn, it was the M1 model.

I guess, Apple's M1 Pro and Macbook Pro with M1 (which could be called M1 (chip) Pro (model) is not the best naming scheme.

 

Then it does sound more realistic, especially with high display brightness and maybe HDR.

[BondiBlue]

2 minutes ago, Darkseth said:

you're right, totally my bad. Idk why i read that so wrong lol. Could've sworn, it was the M1 model.

I guess, Apple's M1 Pro and Macbook Pro with M1 (which could be called M1 (chip) Pro (model) is not the best naming scheme.

 

Then it does sound more realistic, especially with high display brightness and maybe HDR.

Yeah, the displays in the 14" and 16" MBPs can draw a lot of power. I own a 16" M1 Max MBP as well as a 13" M1 MBP, and with both machines at full brightness the 13" easily lasts longer on a full charge, despite the much smaller battery.